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Crytek: Homefront still has great "mind share"

Crytek's Nick Button-Brown, GM of games and company founder Avni Yerli have explained the thinking that led the company to develop a sequel for THQ's shooter Homefront, despite the original's uninspiring critical reception.

"It has a huge mind share, everybody knows the IP," explained Yerli in a noisy booth at GDC.

"The first game has indeed a low Metacritic, but due to really great positioning and great marketing it has reached a good mind share. And I think with Crytek quality attached to it and similar marketing attached to it, it can make a big splash at the time it comes out."

He said that development so far, which has been taking place for some time at Crytek's UK studio in Nottingham, had been very much a collaboration with THQ and that the early builds were looking good.

"When you look at the world they created in the first game and the world that they were talking about for the second game, the setting they were talking about... obviously we can't talk about it yet, but it's really cool," added Button-Brown.

Back in 2010 THQ core games boss Danny Bilson had hinted that future instalments of the game could be set in London.

"In the end it's the team's choice," said Button-Brown of the franchise.

"The team choose and they really, really like it and thought it was a great opportunity and we'll support them on that."

The two executives also revealed that Crytek was working on a free-to-play title for tablet, alongside announced projects like Fibble, the company's first mobile game, and free-to-play shooter Warface.

The company is also backing GFACE, a new streaming service and social network for free-to-play games. While Yerli was reluctant to talk about it, Button-Brown did point out that the most important feature of the service was accessibility.

"It's about adding social experience to gaming, but a lot of it is about accessibility. Not everybody wants to download a 2GB client that's going to sit there on their PC, people want to experience it in a more casual way," he said.

"It's accessibility and low entrance barrier, ideally for free," added Yerli, before explaining he was playing police, and wouldn't be saying anything more about the upcoming service.

That's a regional thing, Tim. Collective nouns (like company names, band names, etc.) differ in their plurality depending on the region and dialect of English. From what I understand, our UK brethren treat collective proper nouns as plural, while we of the North American persuasion treat them as singular. Different strokes and all that.